I am indebted to Mehul Mehta and to Harsh Mehta and to Rainer Maria
Rilke who inspired this conversation.
This is one of my all time favorite quotes implying, as it does, the
tangible, imminent possibility of authentic freedom and
power for everyone and anyone.
There's no
business as usualdog eat dog cutthroat competition here. There's no
I-win-you-lose mentality here - nor you-win-I-lose. This
isn't Wall Street. It's not the Super Bowl either.
This is
"IT".
This is the spirit. And when the spirit wins, when
IT
wins, no one and nothing else loses. When
IT
wins, everyone and everything wins - with no
one and nothing left out.
In many ways for many people this is profound. In many ways for many
people this is beautiful. It's even sublime. In many other ways
for other people, it's perplexing. It's confusing. It goes against the
grain of what they've learned about how to get along, about how
to survive in Life in what they construe to be a you or
me world. In particular it flies in the face of almost
everything our capitalistic and sports crazy culture is about. The idea
that if you win I win also, simply isn't real for most
people. And the idea that if I win you win also, is
completely unreal - that is to say, it's completely unreal
given the
interpretations
we've made up about what it takes to live Life successfully on
our planet.
The spirit ("the spirit" is
who we all really
are)
wants only that there be flying. What is "flying"? The spirit
wants only that we ("we" is all of us with no one and nothing left
out)break through
what's commonly and erroneously taken for granted about our
limitations ie what's commonly and erroneously taken for
granted as impossible. By our limitations I mean our limitations
of our ways of being, our limitations of what's possible for our
ways of being, our limitations of what's possible for how we are for
ourselves, our limitations of what's possible for how we are for each
other. By flying I mean being in a way which soars above the commonplace.
By flying I mean the triumph of
transformation
over resignation.
The spirit has no attachment to whether it's he or whether
it's someone else who happens to fly. Even if someone actually happens
to fly, the spirit will write only a minor footnote about him or her
... that is, if he writes anything about him or her at all. The spirit
has only a passing interest in whomever actually happens to fly. The
spirit celebrates and acknowledges the accomplishment as if it's his
own. But it's even more than that: the spirit celebrates and
acknowledges the accomplishment as if it's everyone's.
Given the spirit is
who we all really are,
given the spirit is
who each of us really is,
Rainer Maria Rilke is speaking the possibility of each of us making
flying happen for every one of us. This is genuine
openheartedness. This is true sharing. This is also real
empowerment ie this is
giving it away
to everyone. It's generosity to the nth degree.
It's also pure selflessness. There's neither
ego
here nor expectation of reward. Not only that, but notice there's also
a sense of
inexorability,
of inevitability here. As the man says, "If I don't manage
to fly, someone else will.".